THE VOICE OF
A THOUSAND YEARS

FAWAZ AL-MATROUK

Can you hear me?

It sounded like music, distant melodies of a stringed instrument, but in the shape of comprehensible words. Haider ibn Hashem Al-Hadi, white-haired and bent by old age, turned to the voice, questioning his senses. There was no one in his workshop, just the various clocks and mechanics, parchments and papers, broken and half-repaired objects that comprised his life’s work. He stroked his beard, and then his forehead, wondering if his mind was waning like the sight of his eyes and the joints of his hands.

I can feel your heartbeat through the tremors of the air.

The old man turned again. There was, among his collection of dis-carded objects, an ancient qanun, laid against the wall so the twenty-six sets of triple strings were standing upright, facing him. It had come into his workshop years ago, in the displacement of prized possessions that followed the violence of Hulagu Khan, who sacked the City of Peace.

A vibration moved through the strings.

Can you hear me?

Ibn Hashem looked astonished. The instrument seemed to talk to him. He lifted himself with effort and shuffled across the workshop floor.

I can feel you moving.

“I am here.”

A trill moved through the strings like a sigh, a gasp of disbelief and appreciation.

You are the first to answer my call. You might be the last who can.

“Who are you?”

I have been trapped in this wood for many lifetimes. I was part of the tree before it was cut. Part of the instrument it was shaped into. Each stroke of the chisel, each wooden chip, took a piece of my soul with it. I have been dying with time.

“Are you a genie?”

No. I will not grant you wishes. I have one of my own to ask.

The old man considered, before he said: “Ask it.”

Long ago, I lost my body and its motion. I transferred myself into a tree to preserve my soul. I could not move, but could draw life from the ground, and feel the world around me. Then I was cut and shaped into a prow, and I lost a piece of myself. I traveled on the seas, but had no choice of my destiny, no sap or source of life, so I waned and diminished. I transferred myself into an amphora on the ship, and from there into a tree it was placed beside. But that tree, too, was cut down, and I was shaped into this instrument, in which form at least I have a voice. I tried to speak, but none before you listened, they turned away in fear, they believed me an evil spirit. I kept silent then. I passed many lifetimes wasting away, losing my strength, facing the inevitability of death in silence, until I was brought into your presence. I have felt your heartbeat through the tremors of the air. I have heard you speak words of truth and wisdom. I speak to you now, as my last hope of life.

“What do you wish?”

A body to move with.

Ibn Hashem looked at the workshop around him. Clocks, astrolabes, musical instruments. Wood, copper, silver, and gold. These could be used to fashion an automaton, complex in the style of Al-Jazari, which the spirit might inhabit.

“How do I know your intentions are good?”

The qanun shivered its strings at random, as if searching for an answer.

You do not. And nothing I can say would convince you. But perhaps, in our dialogue, you may know me for who I am.

The old man nodded, stroking his beard, lost in imagination. He wondered what might happen when the spirit in a qanun moved into a mechanical body. Where would it go and why? What would it see and discover? He wanted to know.

Ibn Hashem shuffled to his workbench and picked up a measure.

It took forty days and forty nights to build the automaton. Ibn Hashem never stopped to rest, working by lamplight when all of Baghdad slept. He collapsed on his workbench at times, on the floor at others. Often, he woke with a new idea to try, and resumed his work without eating until the noontime call to prayer reminded him of the hour. He inked his fingertips black, drafting and redrafting designs, turned his hands red with hammers and chisels.

It was made of various woods, with iron gears where elbows, knees, and hip joints should be. He tested its balance and made adjustments to its weight. He stretched its arms and flexed its fingers. He carved a wooden face, but looking at its blank shape disturbed him, so he painted open eyes and eyelashes.

Throughout this work, his dialogue with the voice continued.

“Where are you from?”

Somewhere far away.

“Toward the Mongols in the East? Or the Romans in the West?”

Neither. Toward the stars above.

“You come from a star?”

From a moon you cannot see.

“When did you come here?”

A long time ago.

“How long?”

Some things are hard to explain.

“I am eighty-two years old. Have you been here as long as that?”

Much longer.

“A thousand years?”

Longer still. I have been here since before humankind learned to speak. I came with fellow travelers from my home, to meet the new intelligence on Earth. Some of us chose to return, others chose to stay.

“Where are they now?”

I do not know. We lost our bodies, one by one. They may be dead. Or they may have found their way into objects, like me.

Ibn Hashem wanted to know everything, but the answers were so far beyond his comprehension at times, they seemed to live with the fun-damental questions of existence, which only God can know.

“Do you have a name?”

Even that is hard to explain in sounds you would recognize. The closest to my name is David, or Dawood if you prefer.

“My mother was Persian. I can pronounce the ‘v’ in David.”

Then call me David.

At the end of forty days, ibn Hashem declared his mechanical body finished. He placed it next to the qanun and rested the wooden hand on its strings, which shivered with the sounds of pleasure.

“Can you feel that?”

Yes. I can find my way in.

The qanun began to strum in ecstasy and desire. The mechanical hand began to glow with cracks of light, no brighter than the moon on human skin, moving with effort from the fingertips and onward, joint by joint, so that in a quarter of an hour, it reached the mechanical wrist.

You have done well, my friend, my good savior. Rest yourself for now. It is difficult work to embody an object, it will take time and effort. I will not be finished before the songbirds welcome a new day.

Ibn Hashem tried to stay awake, to witness the transformation as the glow moved through the mechanical body, branching dim like lightning, bending straight like an arrow. Sometime between the elbow and the shoulder gear, the old man fell asleep.

The clatter woke him up. He found the automaton splayed on the ground, motionless and bent.

“David?”

The old man lifted himself and shuffled across the workshop. He bent over the mechanical body, pained himself to reach for it, and shook its shoulder to wake up.

“Can you hear me?”

He turned the automaton onto its side and looked into its painted eyes. It was all wood and metal, with no force of life in it. The old man blinked as a wave of grief moved through his body. He shuffled to the qanun against the wall, laid a bare hand on its inlaid wood.

“Are you in here?”

No melody answered him.

Ibn Hashem sat on the floor, crossed his legs, rocked back and forth to resist the tide of grief that welled and welled until he had to wipe the tears from his eyes. He felt the weight of everything he had lost in his life, the smile of his mother, the touch of his wife, the friends and family who died in peace, the neighbors who died in horror, the war cry of the Mongol men, the streets umber with blood, the river black with ink, the dreams he dreamed like soap bubbles pricked by pain and passing time.

When his body had suffered all the grief it could, he lowered his tear-soaked hands and looked with red-veined eyes. He saw the space between the qanun and the automaton. He thought to move them close together, placing the wooden hand on the instrument.

Light moved from the fingertips to the inlaid wood.

It branched and straightened toward the strings.

Ibn Hashem watched with eyes wide open, hypnotized and hopeful. When the light touched the closest string, it vibrated with sound. One by one, each string in three sounded a distant note. When all twenty-six triple strings had played, a shiver moved through them. It sounded weaker than it had before.

I thought I might be voiceless again, trapped in a motionless object.

“How did I fail us?”

I do not know. I found myself inside, I could feel the limbs and gears, but I had no power to move them. I could see nothing, and had no voice to speak. I feared you might discard me.

“I feared that, too.”

You may still have to in the end. The transfer to another object is difficult. I lose a part of me every time.

“You sound weaker than before.”

I feel it, too.

“How do you move into objects? Help me understand.”

Some things are too difficult to explain.

“If I am to build a better machine, one you can move and embody, I have to understand.”

Do you know that all matter is made of smaller parts of matter? Smaller than you could ever see with an eye or with a lens?

“You mean the atom?”

Yes.

“I read of it in Al-Ghazali. But he was answered by ibn Rushd.”

Ibn Rushd was wrong.

“I find that hard to believe.” The old man stroked his beard, blinking, troubled. “I have read all the works of Al-Ghazali. He was a man of small horizons, afraid of knowledge and discovery. He said that all truth ends in the Holy Books. He denied experiment and experience as forms of heresy. We ignored him and his tribe, we men of science. Ibn Rushd made discovery possible again, by proving that the works of God extend beyond the Holy Books to Nature itself. He answered Al-Ghazali with arguments from logic and Aristotle. I find it hard to believe that he was wrong.”

This is how I knew you would answer my call, when all others had run in fear. This wisdom and knowledge. But remember: Truth may exist in a mind full of error, and error may exist in a mind full of truth. You cannot give loyalty to a man, or tribe, or belief, at the expense of truth itself. If there is nothing else you hear from me, let it be that, and teach it to others.

“Let us assume that atoms are true, for now.”

When I embody an object, I have to reshape the atoms within it, so they may hold my intelligence. Otherwise, I would be spirit without mind, and soon would dissipate into nothingness. What you would call death.

“Does every object have the same atoms?”

No. Metal has metal atoms. Wood has wooden atoms. At the deepest levels, they are the same, but at the level of my work, they are different. Just as blades and hammers are both made of iron, but they act differently.

“Maybe it is the materials, then, that require change. I built the mechanism of coarser wood and baser metals than the qanun you embody.”

That was my conjecture, too.

“Then I have work to do.”

Every clock in his workshop was dismantled, for its copper, silver, and gold. He designed a metal instrument to represent the heart, and another to represent the mind, with intricate gears and grooves like an astrolabe. Building limbs around these cores, he found himself needing more metal. He looked through his workshop and found one promising source of gold: his books.

Ibn Hashem had spent decades writing these books from memory. When the Mongol army sacked Baghdad, they tore into the House of Wisdom and dumped hundreds of manuscripts into the Tigris. Ibn Hashem, like so many other scholars, wept and beat his head over the immensity of the loss. He spent months without hope, but soon began to collect fragments of his memory from books he had read, reconstructing them in his own words. If the works themselves could not survive, at least the ideas within them might.

None of the books was ready. Each had long, empty pages where his memory had failed. He had resolved to work on them until his final days, remembering what he could, adding his own discoveries, until his hand ceased to move. Then they would be discovered by his son in his absence, and he would not have to face the shame of empty pages.

Now ibn Hashem resolved to make use of the books within his lifetime. What would improve upon a legacy of half-remembered books? Giving life to David, the voice of a thousand years.

He began to sell his books, one by one, to merchants from Persia, India, and China.

***

The new automaton was close to being finished when ibn Hashem’s son came to visit.

“You have to be silent,” he whispered to the qanun. “The apple landed far from this tree.” He covered the mechanical body with a cloak, ensured that all was hidden, and shuffled to the door.

Ibrahim looked a version of his father, standing taller by a fist, with a black beard and black turban. He greeted ibn Hashem warmly with words of peace. He insisted on making coffee in his father’s kitchen.

“The father should not serve the son,” he said.

As they sipped coffee, sitting cross-legged on the floor, Ibrahim surveyed the broken clocks around him. “I heard you were selling books in the marketplace.”

“I was.”

“Is my father in need of money?”

“I have what I need.”

Ibrahim nodded, and took a thoughtful sip of coffee.

“You’re always in my prayers, Father. Five times a day and more, when I commune with the divine, I ask Him for blessings and forgiveness.”

Ibn Hashem nodded thanks.

“But I’m afraid it may not be enough, Father. You’re approaching a time when you may face the Creator and His Judgment. You have to consider your soul. What will you say, when you meet Him? That you have dedicated your life to the works of man? To philosophy and invention? When all we need is given to us in the Quran?”

Ibn Hashem could not help but sigh.

“You should come to live with me, where you can leave these works behind and rest your mind. We can pray together and reconcile you with God, for all that you have done in your life.”

“I am proud,” said ibn Hashem, “of all that I have done.”

“Pride itself is an error, the first and lasting error of Satan. If you are proud of the life you have lived, then we have work to do in repentance and humility. We have to consider your eternity, Father.”

Ibn Hashem swallowed the last of his coffee in a gesture of farewell.

“If the father should not serve the son, the son should not lecture the father. I have lived more years and seen more truth than you could ever imagine.”

“And yet the Prophet himself and his generation had to teach their elders, as I teach you now. You have lived more years but have not found your way to Revelation.”

“I pray, I fast, I took the pilgrimage.”

“But you believe in heresies and absurdities. Not only that, but you write them down, and sell them now, so that others may be confused. I hoped that I could save you from the consequence by burning these works when I inherit, but here you are sending them to all corners of the world in the hands of merchants!”

His voice became loud and impassioned.

Ibn Hashem faced him, his face turning red, his breath deep with rage.

A trill sounded from the qanun.

Ibrahim set his cup down, his voice meek and repentant. “Have you learned nothing from the devastation God sent? Like the lands of Sodom and Gomorrah, like the Pharaohs of Egypt, we were sent a plague of Mongols to destroy our lives and homes. Was that not enough for you to understand that the way we lived, our experiments and heresy, invited the scorn of God?”

“I forgive you,” said the father. “You remember the pain of the boy who witnessed so much horror. It inscribed fear into your heart. But I remember the pain of the man who protected you when others were lost. Who held you to his chest at night and sang you lullabies. I am the reason you lived long enough to close your eyes to the world, and your mind to knowledge, and to lecture me from the smallness of your belief. But I will not be lectured. The Mongols asked only for our bended knees, and we gave it. You ask for my bended mind, and that—” he pounded a fist to the ground “—that you can never have.”

The old man lifted himself slowly to his feet. Ibrahim remained seated. He raised the coffee cup to his lips, but could not bring himself to drink. When ibn Hashem walked away, Ibrahim noticed the qanun against the wall.

“Of course,” he scoffed. “The devil has taken hold of your soul, from every direction. You even have instruments of music and pleasure, which take your attention away from God. Do you play the qanun instead of saying your prayers?”

He was at the qanun now, and he picked up a hammer.

Ibn Hashem rushed as fast as he could. He caught Ibrahim’s wrist in its downward swing.

“You have no right!” he shouted. “If you hurt the qanun, I will curse and condemn you before God when I meet Him.”

Anger sparked in Ibrahim’s eyes. He pulled his wrist, threw his father off balance, the two of them jostled, and tumbled, and fell against the mechanical body, which clattered to the ground and revealed itself.

Ibrahim stared in disbelief.

“Idols?” he shouted. “Idols? Is this the god you pray to now?”

And the hammer smashed the wooden face, and metal heart, and arms, and hands, and fingers. With a frenzy of blows, the mechanical body lay broken in pieces.

Ibn Hashem began to collect the pieces. He raised them to examine them, one by one, and placed them in the outline of a body. Some were damaged beyond repair, the wood splintered, the gears flattened. These would have to be remade. Others were only bent and could be fixed with some effort. He began with these.

You should rest your mind.

David warned him, but ibn Hashem continued to work until he col-lapsed. He buried his eyes into aching hands that night. His work felt hopeless to him now. Over days and nights, whenever he forced himself to return, an image would overtake his mind and lead him to contemplation. He would gaze into nothingness, and see the image of his books on fire.

His son would have burned them. His own son, turning knowledge into flames. Ibn Hashem would have died peacefully, dreaming of a future that could never exist. How fortunate it was that these books were now sold to unknown minds in unknown places, to distant strangers who were more family than his son.

This, and the end of his days, and the sight of his work in broken pieces, made it impossible for ibn Hashem to move. He would contemplate these images for hours on end, hoping to sleep and never wake up.

David did not disrupt the reveries. He played music instead, moving the strings of the qanun, adding mournful sounds to the dark and flickering light.

One morning, with a bulbul greeting the sun outside, ibn Hashem shuffled to the qanun.

“Forgive me, David. I have wasted precious time. I thought my only family were unknown minds in unknown places. But in a dream, I turned this thought and saw another aspect, that there are distant strangers who are family to me. They might speak other languages, they might be unborn, but they share my love of knowledge. I will never meet them, but you might, if we succeed. What would you tell them?”

I would tell them our story.

Ibn Hashem smiled. He shuffled to the remnants of that mechanical body, and stooped, and began to build it up with worn-out tools.

By evening prayer on the seventh day, ibn Hashem had completed the restoration. The new automaton sat gleaming in copper and gold, in a framework of the finest sandalwood. It had the strings of an oud across its chest, to act as vocal cords for the voice of a thousand years.

“David,” he said, “I invite you to your new home.”

Thank you.

The answer in a qanun melody was faint and distant. The voice was growing weak.

With a copper hand on the inlaid wood, the spirit began to move into its mechanical body. Light branched and straightened up through the fingertips, into the arms, and toward the metal heart and mind.

Ibn Hashem stayed awake. He forced himself to. His breath was heavy and his heartbeat weak. He had exhausted himself in old age, wondered whether every sleep might be his last. He resisted the urge to close his eyes and drift into unconsciousness. He wanted to see David come to life.

With no working clock left, he could not tell how long the time had been, but soon the windows turned pink with the dawn, and songbirds began to greet the new day. The light had ceased to move across the mechanical body. Ibn Hashem waited, hoping for some movement of the limbs, but it never came.

As the morning prayer was called, he saw the strings of the oud vibrate on the mechanical body. The voice they made was barely audible.

I cannot. . . move . . . I have . . . to find . . . my way back.

Ibn Hashem rubbed his eyes in defeat, as the dim light of the spirit made its way back to the qanun, bit by painful bit.

They continued to work on the design together, David and ibn Hashem, talking through theories, designing body parts, trying the transfer into mechanical limbs. But every time, the body failed to move, the spirit returned, and the voice in the qanun grew weaker. It became a melody so thin that the old man had to bend close in order to hear it.

Haider ibn Hashem Al-Hadi. Leave me be.

The old man stopped his work and listened to the voice.

You did what you could. We must all face our void in the end. I thought death would come after a thousand years, or more, but I have to accept it sooner than I hoped. You are growing weaker, too, I can feel it. Do not spend your last days of life on me. You did what you could. Now, you should reconcile with your son; his mind was in error, but his heart was full of love. You should follow the dream I have heard you dream, of taking the great road from Baghdad to the East, of seeing the lands of India and China, if you get that far, of enjoying the Mongol peace which came at the price of so much hardship and bloodshed. Go see what others have discovered about the world around you. That would be my wish for myself, and it is my wish for you. I do not want to feel your heart stop beating in the tremors of the air. Go and leave me to the workshop here.

“There is nothing I want more,” said the old man, “than to see you move again. Maybe to roam the Earth, maybe to travel to the stars, and find your way back home. I am an old man, but you are young. You have lived a thousand years, you can live a thousand more.”

But I have lived a good life. I have seen the new intelligence on Earth find its words, its tools, and its knowledge. I have been a tree and felt the sap move through my veins. I have been a prow and traveled the seven seas. I have been the strings that bring music and joy to open hearts. I lived to meet a generous man, who listened to my voice without fear of the unknown. I have made my peace. I have no regrets.

“I would have one, if I left you to die.”

And the old man continued to work.

One evening, by lamplight, he stared into the painted eyes of the automaton. He thought of all that he might see if he could travel the world. Sunrise over the Himalayas. Gondolas floating on distant rivers. Hoopoes flying from bamboo stalks. He had seen these scenes in illustration, and he wondered what they would look like breathing life.

He stared at the automaton, and thought: Painted eyes can see nothing.

Ibn Hashem spent the night recollecting the work of ibn Al-Haytham, who discovered that a pinhole in a darkened room could create an image on the wall. He fashioned two miniature cubes in silver and punctured a hole in each, carving their place into the wooden face of the mechanical body.

Leave me be, the spirit whispered. Leave . . .

It could not finish.

“It has to be right,” said the old man. “One more failure could be the last.”

His limbs felt weak and heavy. He fashioned eyelids out of copper and set them on a gear to open and close. He fashioned copper nerves from the metal mind, and copper veins from the metal heart, which he turned into a furnace with a waterwheel, so the automaton would have its own source of power. He took great care with every detail of the body, even carving strands of hair with love and hope put into every stroke of the chisel. In the absence of knowledge, and with no certain future, he relied on the example of nature to guide his design and referenced the anatomical drawings of ibn Sina.

One day, he had no more energy left to work.

“I’ve done what I can,” he told the spirit. “It is up to you now. Can you find the strength to move your soul into this lifeless body? Or would you rather sing the rest of your days in the qanun?”

A weak tremor moved through the strings as it wondered.

Death awaits us when we stand still.

Ibn Hashem understood his meaning, and placed the hand of the automaton on the qanun. The first branch of light moved weakly into the fingertips. The old man sat himself down, leaning against the wall, where he could witness without effort, and hope against hope.

The light moved dimly through the mechanical body, slow and methodical, branching and straightening its way to the arm, to the shoulders, to the strings across the chest, to the metal heart, and metal veins, and intricate nerves, and mind.

The light disappeared. Ibn Hashem waited.

His breath weak.

Deliberate.

Hoping for any sign of life.

The automaton opened its eyes.

The old man smiled and closed his.